This film is a factious auto/bike/biography of Alfred Jarry who was a
quintessential modern hero anticipating the 20th century though he
destroyed himself already in 1907 at age 32 through the insane consumption
of absinth, alcohol and self-induced, self-deceiving madness. Jarry
created KING UBU a grotesque, pathetic dictator that foreshadowed the
megalomania, failure and destruction of those disastrous men that
terrorized Nazi-Europe, Fascist Spain and Stalinist Russia. Gender
troubled and unsure about anything, Jarry embraced the future in a
futurist manner, fantasizing about new machines and daring technologies of
the self that put into questions the limits of mankind. He wrote about
Permanent Motion Food, a performance enhancing drug that lets his
supermale cyclists compete with high speed bullet trains going 250 km an
hour and allow men make love 82 times in 24 hours. He also wrote about
disciplinary apparatuses that beat children and women automatically and
time machines that transgress reality and age. Most interesting Alfred
Jarry lived a life that was characterized by his permanent use of the just
newly invented bicycle, the carrying and careless use of a gun and
disregard over his social, financial and physical resources, which lead to
his premature death.

Ce qui roule - That which rolls - Early forms of Rollin' Rock tries to
take up some of the schizo-poetic strains Alfred Jarry laid out and lived
through. It is an accumulation of anecdotes, historic events, poetic
projections and invented prolongations sketching the silhouettes of the
historical as well as the imagined poet. I don't try to differ between
Jarry's writing and his own life; I also don't limit myself to what might
be historically reasonable or feasible but expand the scope of cinematic
production to the point of anachronistic paradigms that obey only the
structure of the film itself.

The film is staring various professional actors, a striptease dancer, a
famous monkey (Bosse De Nage), retro-projections, lots of art history,
kitsch and “dirty things for old men” not forgetting two nearly 100 year
old bicycles. The kaleidoscopic concatenation of scenes and filmic
passages not only try to make of Alfred Jarry an ambivalent anti-hero but
also to transform the bicycle from a one-dimensional vehicle into a
machine that expands love making, seduces people and misspells technology.
The bicycle and its parts plays a role of an iron companion, a drawing
pencil, a chaotic mixer of literature, love, life and film.

Rainer Ganahl November 2008

ce qui roule - early forms of rollin'rock - a film by rainer ganahl on alfred jarry